We caught American rockers Greta Van Fleet on the final night of the Dreams in Gold tour before they took a break, before heading out for a limited run in support of the band’s new Starcatcher album that comes out in July. The band consists of brothers Josh, Jake and Sam Kiszka, and Danny Wagner (vocals, guitar, bass/keys and drums) respectively. This band’s fan base grew to new heights very quickly and they didn’t disappoint the adoring crowd, especially on this final night where the band were clearly having a great time on stage.
FOH Engineer Steve Cross
“Mixing for Greta Van Fleet is a real privilege. They are old school rock, but it is all fresh and new music in that style. They seem to really connect with a young audience in a way that I haven’t seen from other old school type bands. It’s a fun ride!” says Cross, who came onboard in 2019. He says it started out very basic for audio. “I think it was under 24 channels — drums, bass, two key channels, a very loud guitar and a vocal.” For years, Cross has always had large input list bands, and the challenge is always to find space for everything in the mix. “Those techniques I had learned all went out the window here. I needed to take the sounds I had and make them all fill as much space as they could. They wanted to sound huge.”
Cross says he mixes almost totally in the box with the Avid S6L console. In addition to the onboard Avid Revibe and delays, he uses the Crane Song Phoenix. “Initially, I accomplished a lot of that huge sound with careful reverb choices,” he says. “I lean on the Crane Song Phoenix plug-in quite a bit to sort of fatten up some sounds without losing them in the muck.” He calls the Phoenix “an amazing plug-in that can be used on almost anything to really bring it forward in a mix. It’s really the secret ingredient for me. I use a couple special effects items from a Waves server; a chorus and a flanger. No outboard analog gear at all. I try to keep things as simple as possible.”
Vocal mic-wise, Josh sings into a wired Shure SM58. He gives Cross all the flexibility and creativity he wants with effects. Some effects were on the albums originally, and some are just things Cross has added on his own. “There are lots of delay effects when it fits. Josh does a lot of improvised vocals in the show, so it’s a very ‘on the fly’ decision for me.” Cross says all of his vocal effects are on faders he can grab quickly. As they grew into this arena production, Sam Kiszka added a B3 and Leslie and plays bass with his feet on the pedals. Then he has a Nord and a Mellotron that also has a bass pedal setup. “There are a lot of cool sounds coming from him. He also improvises a lot as far as which instruments he plays, and when. It keeps me on my toes. Jake moved to a stereo guitar rig that’s still evolving. He is able to do some sweeping pans with a Wah pedal and things like that. It can be huge at times. We are just wrapping up this album cycle and looking ahead to the next one that starts this summer. I am excited to see where we go next.”
Cross is an independent mixer but has done many tours out with Clair Brothers Audio. He says that when they came out with the Cohesion rig, it put them on that “A-List” of line arrays. “We have had great success with the CO12 rig this tour.”
Early on, Cross notes they struggled to get lead vocalist Josh Kiszka comfortable on stage. “Before I was here, they kept changing the mic and trying all the tricks to get him comfy and sounding the way he should. Ed Janiszewski came in on monitors at the same time I started. We convinced Josh to go back to the Shure SM58 and let Ed give him a proper mix. After a few shows, the mic choice wasn’t in question, and Josh settled into a mix that makes him comfortable on stage.” Once all of that was behind them, Josh blossomed into a powerhouse on stage. “His mic technique is excellent. Chris Daniels joined us as monitor engineer this year and has done a great job of preserving that trust and comfort for Josh on stage. It’s 100% teamwork.”
Cross says the bandmembers love to come out to FOH and listen to playbacks — they’re full of excitement soaking up that feeling and listening to the mix. He notes they are all very smart about their sounds and how they blend. “They recognize when something isn’t working, and we discuss whether it’s a mix change or a source change that’s going to make it work better. We have been pretty spoiled with this tour,” he adds. “All arenas and no outdoor venues, except for a handful of festivals. My only challenge is adapting the reverbs to work in the dry outdoor environment. The arena is half of the reverb sound, so when we roll into a festival, it requires a little work. Sometimes just a little more level, but often I will have to change the reverb altogether.”
According to Cross, system engineer Eder Moura has been instrumental in his success with this P.A. “He is crazy smart and very meticulous about how he covers the room and aligns the P.A. We have accomplished as smooth of a bass response throughout the arena as I have ever had. Eder spent the time to make a lot of tiny adjustments that have added up to a big difference. The whole audio crew seems to emulate Eder’s attitude. I am thankful to have these guys supporting me. I also want to mention our monitor tech, Tanner Peters, who was the second engineer in the studio when the guys recorded their first EP. He’s been by their side ever since. He is an excellent member of the team and has spent quite a bit of the tour mixing FOH for our opening acts as well. I have a feeling someday he will be answering these questions while I am plugging in his FOH! I am proud to have toured with each and every member of this sound crew.”
Monitor Engineer Chris Daniels
Chris Daniels joined this tour as monitor engineer after the audio control package had already been put together and had been out on the road. He’s a fan of DiGiCo and Yamaha products and thinks the SD12 96 console was a great fit for the monitor end of the snake on this tour. “Like with all DiGiCo products, the SD12 made it effortless to adapt to changes happening quickly on deck. It’s nice to work on any console surface that has three or more different ways to achieve the same goal. It helps bring in a creative approach to the mix. To me, while other products have come a long way and have improved a lot, snapshots/scenes and macros/user defined keys are still the most well done on DiGiCo.”
Daniels says most of what they’ve doing in monitors is achieved onboard but there are a couple of things happening outside of the box. “Ed Janiszewski, the previous mixer who I took over for, made a lot of great choices, so I didn’t really feel a need to change much when I stepped in. Aside from the couple of outboard pieces, we’re using three Waves plug-ins: Abbey Road’s smooth vocal verb and a doubler on the lead vocal, which both sound great when carefully blended. These are fed via auxes and are returned to stereo input channels for more control. The doubling effect is very subtle, and the ‘verb can change slightly from room to room. We also returned a L/R FX from FOH to the monitor stage rack for drum FX that Steve (Cross) dialed with the band for two songs.”
On Josh’s lead vocal, Daniels has a Neve Shelford preamp and a Neve 545 Primary Source Enhancer. He hadn’t used this preamp before this tour and was very impressed. “Everything about it was smooth, simple and helped elevate the response of the vocal. The 545 or 5045 has become a ‘go to’ tool for almost any vocal input that is moving around the stage a lot or away from the capsule, especially when there’s a lot of that vocal in the mix.”
Most of the band members wear IEMs and also have wedges, while guitarist Jake Kiszka uses wedges only. “We had a PSM1000 package out and were using UE Live’s from Ultimate Ears and are very happy with them. For wedges, we had Clair CM14’s on deck. The combo of IEM and wedges was really just for feel for the guys.”
Josh is using is standard Shure SM58 painted white to match the rest of the stage set. “Like Steve said, this is a very straight-ahead show. The most unique thing I did on the monitor side was assigning a couple of select inputs to be pre- or post-fader to specific mixes on certain snapshots, so I could push solos and certain parts on control groups. A lot of times you can build this type of thing into your snapshots, but this band is really playing off of each other and making the music in the moment. No tracks, no click, no timecode, etc.” Daniels expresses gratitude for the “whole experience — with a great band, crew and gear to match. Monitor tech Tanner Peters, Ed Janiszewski, Steve Cross and Eder Moura made things really easy for me.”
Systems Engineer Eder Moura
Eder Moura is a freelancer hired by Clair Global, who assign him to various tours. “My position as SE is to assist when needed and to make the FOH engineer’s life easier. I’m responsible to ensure that everyone in the audience hears the best show possible. That can be a challenge because each venue has its own profile, making that sometimes very easy or very hard. But in general, we get that nailed down.”
Moura uses Smaart for time alignment and spectrum analysis, and a touch screen laptop for the Lake controller used for amp monitoring. GVF are using the Cohesion System from Clair Global. The box count consists of 12 80-degree CO-12, plus four 120-degree CO-12 per side as main hang and 12 CO-12 per side as side hang. There are 18 CP-218 subs in a downstage arc sub array in a cardioid configuration and four 120-degree CO-8 as front fills. “The entire Cohesion System is powered by Lab Gruppen PLM20K44 amps. All the CP218 are self-powered. The Cohesion system really sounds good in Steve’s hands. It’s a great system, easy to deploy, has lots of headroom and has worked out very well on this tour.”
CREW
- Sound Company: Clair Global
- FOH Engineer: Steve Cross
- Monitor Engineer: Chris Daniels
- Systems Engineer: Eder Moura
- Recording Engineer: Alex Pasco
- P.A. Techs: Connor McRae; Harrison Travaglino
- Monitor Tech: Tanner Peters
P.A. GEAR
- Mains: (12) Clair 80° CO12 & (4) 120° CO12/side
- Side Hangs: (12) 120° CO12/side
- Subs: (18) CP218 in cardioid configuration
- Front Fills: (4) 120° CO8
- Amps: Lab Gruppen PLM20k44.
FOH GEAR
FOH Console: Avid VENUE S6L
Outboard: Crane Song Phoenix
Mics: Shure SM58 (vocals); Shure KSM 32s (guitars); Shure SM 91 (kick); SM57 snare top, Telefunken TLM102 (bottom); Neumann KM 104s (hi-hat & overheads); Audix D6 (toms); Beta 98s on roto toms and timbales
MON GEAR
- Monitor Console: DiGiCo SD12
- Outboard: Waves plug-ins, Neve Shelford preamp, Neve 545 Primary Source Enhancer
- Wedges: Clair CM14
- IEMs: Shure PSM1000; Ultimate Ears UE Live IEMs
More Greta Van Fleet 2023 tour photo by Steve Jennings:
